Vanessa Marano & Lorenzo Henrie: Why It’s So Great To Work With Siblings — ‘They Have Your Back’

Lorenzo Henrie teams up with his brother David Henrie in ‘This Is the Year.’ HL spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Lorenzo and co-star Vanessa Marano about working with siblings, their movie’s ‘feel-good’ message, and more.

Lorenzo Henrie and Vanessa Marano star as Josh and Molly in BOLD Entertainment’s This Is The Year, which will premiere virtually on Aug. 28. This project was more than just a movie for Lorenzo. It was a chance to work alongside his older brother David Henrie, who stars in the movie and makes his feature directorial debut. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Lorenzo about collaborating with family, and Vanessa weighed in after having worked with her older sister Laura Marano.

“It was great. As much as we had that brotherly love on set of teasing each other and doing the brotherly thing, it was a dream come true working with David, being directed by him,” Lorenzo told HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY. “He knows me the best out of anyone, so he really knew how to get everything out of me.”

Vanessa recently worked co-starred and produced the film Saving Zoë with her sister, and she knows how unique it is to work with a sibling. “It’s nice to be in a situation with a sibling because they’ve gone through this industry with you, and they have your back,” Vanessa said. “But then it was this whole other idea of, wow, we’re all also people who grew up on sets, and we were all child actors, and now we’re the adults.”

Vanessa did get to tease Lorenzo and David on set since she knows exactly what it’s like to work long hours with her sister. “I would do this all the time on set. When Lorenzo and David would like bicker [about] something very small, I’d be like, ‘Oh, this never happened with Laura and myself on Saving Zoë. It was just all rainbows and daisies.’”

This Is The Year is the perfect feel-good movie for the world we’re living in right now. “I think what’s interesting about this film is all the characters start off in very different places, but they kind of all have the same journey, which is this whole theme of expectations versus reality,” Vanessa continued. “Thinking your life is going to go one way, putting pressure on something has to be a perfect experience, and life having a way of saying ‘ha, that’s cute.’ I think in this time period we’re in right now, we’re all coming to terms with this idea of expectations versus a very, very real reality that no one could have seen coming. It’s really wonderful to see that told from a point of view that is joyful, that will put a smile on your face, that is sweet, that has heart. I think it’s important to have these stories that we can all resonate with and relate to, but ultimately make us feel good.”

The movie is a throwback to the coming of age films of the ’80s. Both Vanessa and Lorenzo revealed the coming of age movies that inspired them when they were younger. “Obviously, The Parent Trap, Mean Girls, and The Princess Diaries are three films that shaped young Vanessa into who she is now,” Vanessa admitted. “Just The Princess Diaries with frizzy hair and being a brunette, I was Anne Hathaway. I saw her, I resonated with her, it made me feel alive. I think anything John Hughes also — Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Breakfast Club, Some Kind of Wonderful with my favorite Lea Thompson, who I love and adore.”

As for Lorenzo, he was drawn to sports coming of age films. “David and I loved sports movies, so movies like Mighty Ducks,” he said. “We just loved entertaining, feel-good movies, and we really wanted to bring something like that into Hollywood and for the home experience, so this was something we wanted to put our touch on.”